Former Dolphins offensive line coach suing Ted Wells for defamation
Former Miami Dolphins offensive line coach Jim Turner is suing Bullygate investigator Ted Wells for defamation, reports ESPN's Adam Schefter.
The Dolphins fired Turner along with trainer Kevin O'Neill in February of 2014 in the wake of Wells's report on the Bullygate scandal, which occurred in the middle of the 2013 season.
O'Neill is currently suing the Dolphins for his firing.
Wells was paid by the NFL to investigate Miami's bullying scandal, in which offensive tackle Jonathan Martin left the team and accused fellow lineman Richie Incognito of bullying.
In the report, Wells named Turner as one of the main people responsible for the bullying culture in the Dolphins' locker room.
Turner alleges in his lawsuit that Wells and his law firm, Paul Weiss of New York, were commissioned by the NFL to release a report that would assign blame to specific people such as Turner, in exchange for high pay and future work, according to Schefter.
Last September, Turner released his own report via his attorney in an effort to repair his image. In May, Turner went on Boston radio and blasted Wells, who also investigated the Patriots' Deflategate scandal.
“Wells is not a good human being, and when I didn’t give him the story he wanted, he targeted me as part of a problem in Miami,” Turner told Mad Dog Sports Radio. “He is not an independent investigator. He’s not looking at both sides of the situation. He’s hired by the NFL, and he’s going to print the story that they want printed.”
Wells's status as an independent investigator was recently called into question in the wake of Deflategate. Incognito toldNewsday he also believed the Wells report to be biased.
“Ted Wells came in with a mission against me,” Incognito said. “Ted Wells came in slanted against me, and everything in his report was slanted against me. There were some things in there that would have helped my cause that were left out.”
Incognito was out of the NFL last year before signing with the Buffalo Bills for 2015. Martin retired this offseason after spending one season with the San Francisco 49ers.
Turner and O'Neill have not found jobs since being fired by the Dolphins.
- Rohan Nadkarni
